Join us in this interactive discussion on the current state of Web development. We'll talk about frameworks, tools, processes, and best practices. Bring your questions and jump in to the conversation!

1:00 PM

Solo

Rating risks: Why and how to triage your software vulnerabilities

Peter Mosmans - Go Forward

Solo

Get your geek on

Automated security testing tools are becoming more and more popular, generating even more vulnerability reports. But where does one start to mitigate the sheer amount of vulnerabilities? It's simply impossible to fix everything at once. The session will explain the problems that development teams face when confronted with so many security vulnerabilities. Whether they're found by automated tools, penetration testers, or of course the team itself, it's necessary to triage all those vulnerabilities, in order to mitigate the biggest risks first. We'll give an overview of popular risk rating methodologies and techniques and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Then, we'll demonstrate a practical approach that can be applied by anyone working with vulnerabilities.

1:00 PM

Solo

Get the Most Out of Your Product Manager

Emily Tate - Mind the Product

Solo

Level-up your leadership

CEO of the Product. Product "owner". "The Business". With terms like these, it is no wonder that the relationship between Product Managers and Engineers can be contentious at times. Better products get built when teams are collaborating and working together across disciplines. Product managers and engineers provide needed balance to each other. But too often the balance gets shifted and an "us vs them" mentality emerges. The lack of trust erodes collaboration and keeps teams from operating at a high-performance level. This talk aims to address some common misconceptions about product managers, and discuss how product managers and engineers can work better together to reach a common goal - building products people love.

2:00 PM

Solo

Shipping the Impossible: Five Secrets to Getting Breakthrough Products to Your Customers

Caitlin Kalinowski - Oculus

Solo

Get your geek on

Hear from the head of hardware at Oculus, Caitlin Kalinowski, who leads the teams responsible for the mechanical architecture and product design engineering of the Oculus Rift, Touch controller, and forthcoming standalone products. In this session, you'll learn the secrets behind building and shipping innovative products your customers will love.

2:00 PM

Solo

Power BI: Is it right for you?

Eugene Meidinger - All Lines Technology

Solo

Get your geek on

Power BI is Microsoft's latest and greatest BI tool. But is it a good for your organization? In this talk we are going to take a look at the whole data pipeline: Power BI Desktop, M, DAX, Data Gateways, Power BI Service and custom visuals. By the end of this session, you'll know if Power BI makes sense for your toolkit.

2:00 PM

Solo

Behind the AI Curtain - Designing for Machine Learning Products

Crystal Yan - United States Digital Service

Solo

Get your geek on

When startups first launch, they can make the news with application of cutting edge artificial intelligence (AI) - but convincing users to trust the AI is often another story. There's often also no process for integrating future AI development into product roadmaps. This session covers three key principles for how design and data science teams can work together better to build greater trust among users. Additionally, a case study on how a design and data science team partnered to redesign predictive analytics scores powered by machine learning will illustrate those principles in practice.

2:00 PM

Solo

Building technology skills for a future state that is constantly changing

Judy Marshall - Dimension Data

Solo

Power to the platform

Every day new technology is coming out; Internet of Things, mobile applications, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, bio sensors, blockchain, augmented reality, atomic computing to name a few. Keeping track of this is difficult let alone understanding what will be important or necessary. This is causing disruption fatigue for employees and learning challenges for companies. How does L&D be agile to address an industry that is so vast and what an employee learns now may no longer be relevant in 2 years time? Dimension Data’s focus on building technology skills for the future started 12 months ago; driving a culture of learning and innovation, partnering with strategic content providers such as Pluralsight to fast-track critical skills needed most to ensure clients and analyst’s requirements are met. This was the easy part, building technology skills for two, five years time for technologies that don’t even exist requires understanding and planning with an agile mindset. Expanding an employee’s depth of related skills and expertise in a single field by providing relevant, in-depth content and Immersive experiences that are unique for each employee. This is a presentation sharing Dimension Data’s journey so far, best practices and lessons learnt and will deep dive into each of the critical success factors.

2:00 PM

Panel

Cryptocurrency: Is your business cashing in on the money of the future?

Julie Christ, Leslie Pico, Evelyn Hytopoulos

Panel

Level-up your leadership

Despite the complexity that surrounds cryptocurrency, at its core, cryptocurrency is virtual money—money your business could be tapping into. These digital devices of exchange boast the promise of financial trust on the internet without a server or central authority—something that’s never been done before. But, does your business warrant the use of cryptocurrencies? If so, which ones? And do your teams have the necessary skills to build a blockchain solution? Find out if cryptocurrencies are right for your organization and what the future holds as more companies flock to blockchain IoT solutions to cut costs, expedite processes, and ultimately operate on the money of the future.

3:00 PM

Solo

Productive, Autonomous Teams at Scale

Jim Cooper - Pluralsight

Solo

Get your geek on

How do you build systems that allow teams to work autonomously with minimal coupling while working in the same larger system? In this session, Jim Cooper will share the technical details and people processes that has allowed Pluralsight to accomplish this while growing from 2 to 100+ developers in just 5 years. We'll discuss the pain points we had along the way, what worked, and what didn't. And we'll dive into some technical details about how we moved away from our monolithic architecture using Bounded Contexts, Microservices and Lean software principles to accomplish over 400 monthly releases to production across more than 25 small, autonomous teams.

3:00 PM

Solo

The Intersection of Computer Vision and Machine Learning

Kesha Williams - Chick-fil-A

Solo

Get your geek on

Minority Report was a 2002 American science fiction film based in 2054 where police officers apprehended criminals based on predictions and foreknowledge. We are not in 2054 but fast-forward to 2017, we are now closer than ever before to the world imagined in Minority Report. Computer Vision (CV) is a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that allows machines to analyze images to determine location, facial expressions, human action and even identity! Machine Learning (ML) is a type of AI that provides computers with the ability to learn and make predictions based on a given data set. ML for all intents and purposes is foreknowledge! When vision is combined with foreknowledge, a machine exists that goes far beyond what was imagined in Minority Report. During this talk, we will discuss CV, ML, and dive deep with technical examples that show how to combine the two to generate predictions. The session also discusses the moral and ethical obligations of developers today when building AI systems.

3:00 PM

Solo

Understanding Modern Cloud Architecture

Roland Guijt - Pluralsight Author

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Modern application architecture isn't what it used to be. Maybe in your organization you've already evolved from monolithic applications to a distributed architecture with Web APIs or Microservices. But now that the cloud has matured there are now also several new cloud-exclusive options to consider. The goal of this session is to help you make sense of it all. It offers a comparison of all these technologies. I'll start with giving you a quick overview of the ones that have already been around for some time and then you'll learn about the new kids on the block like serverless computing, cloud service busses and cloud databases. You'll leave with confidence to make the right architectural decisions in your organization.

Join this panel of Fortune 100 technology leaders as they discuss the most pervasive learning and skill development challenges facing the world today. Hear how their companies are partnering with Pluralsight to close skill gaps and build the foundation for tomorrow's success.

3:00 PM

Solo

The Amazing Effectiveness of Deep Learning

Jerry Kurata - InStep Technologies

Solo

Get your geek on

Today we see many new and innovate Machine Learning solutions changing our lives. From unlocking our phones with our face, to detecting heart disease by examining our eyes, and letting our cars drive themselves. These advances are in wide ranging areas but have one thing in common. At their core they are based on Deep Learning. In this talk we go over what makes Deep Learning so special. And see how you can architect Deep Learning solutions that allow you to solve problems you might have thought were unsolvable. Which will let you take your products and ideas in new and exciting directions.

3:00 PM

Solo

Catalytic Skills for Developers: There's Nothing "Soft" About These Skills

April Wensel - Compassionate Coding

Solo

Get your geek on

Being an effective software developer requires so much more than coding ability. Whether you're rallying support for a new tool, negotiating tradeoffs with a designer, or providing feedback in a code review, effective communication is key. Even in the actual code, activities like choosing variable names and designing APIs require empathy for other developers. Motivating ourselves and managing stress are also important skills for a developer. Sadly, skills like communication, empathy, and introspection are too often dismissed as "soft skills," which makes them seem weaker and less important than "hard" technical skills. It's time to change that. These skills actually help us to acquire new technical skills more efficiently, to decide which tools to use, and to share our technical expertise with others. In other words, they help us catalyze the development and application of our technical skills. In this session, you'll learn about catalytic skills and leave with a practical framework for growing them and applying them to become a more effective—and happier—developer.

4:00 PM

Solo

Untangling your enterprise software

Edward Curren - Sentrid

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Enterprises don’t start out as enterprises. They start out as small companies or are born out of existing enterprises. When business starts out the software they develop is written to suit the vision at the time. Over time that vision grows and changes in different ways as do the needs of the business. New functionality is added, and existing systems are made to do tasks for which they were never designed to do and writing it at a pace where we can deliver it in as short a time as possible to meet the needs of an ever-changing business landscape. So, we tend to eliminate anything that adds extra time to delivery. We get to the point where our time is being spent maintaining existing systems at the expense of developing new systems or rather developing new solutions to business problems at hand. And the new development that we are doing is probably in reaction to the demands of the loudest or most influential people in the company, so we fall further and further behind in deliverables, we have longer deployments with more problems and our technical debt is growing rapidly. So how do we go about solving this problem?

4:00 PM

Solo

Build a Better Hiring Process with Design Thinking

Crystal Yan - United States Digital Service

Solo

Level-up your leadership

How do leading organizations hire effectively? Hear how one hiring manager used behavioral science research insights and human-centered design principles to uncover pain points and opportunities in the candidate journey, write more inclusive job descriptions, advocate for investing in many candidate outreach channels, and create a more intentional and fair interview process. Whether you're looking to lead and build out your own hiring process, or you're job searching and want to hear a hiring manager's perspective, this session will help you learn best practices from leading technology corporations, startups, and consulting firms.

4:00 PM

Duo

Channels: A Custom Learning Experience

Dave Rackham, Angela Dannar - Liberty Mutual Insurance

Duo

Power to the platform

Align your team’s learning with key business objectives using channels. Channels are an intuitive way to organize and share Pluralsight content so you can reach your learning goals and business objectives more effectively. In this session, you’ll learn how to use channels to curate content for your own learning, for team development or to share learning journeys with the world.

4:00 PM

Solo

Kotlin and Android – This Changes Everything!

Jim Wilson - JW Hedgehog

Solo

Get your geek on

Kotlin is a rich, modern programming language that greatly improves developer efficiency and productivity while maintaining compatibility with existing environments and libraries. No where is the power of Kotlin more evident than on the Android platform. In this session, we will dig into some of the most significant features and capabilities of the Kotlin language and we’ll demonstrate how these features improve the overall developer experience. As part of our discussion, we’ll examine some of the details of how Kotlin makes such an improved developer experience possible. You do not have to be an Android developer to attend this session. This session is intended for anyone interested in understanding how the power and capabilities of a modern programming language like Kotlin improve the developer experience. You don’t want to miss it!

4:00 PM

Solo

Understanding How HTTPs Protects Your Personal Data

Ross Bagurdes - Bagurdes Technology

Solo

Get your geek on

We all use HTTPs every day, to encrypt important conversations online. HTTPs uses Secure Sockets Layer(SSL), also known as Transport Layer Security(TLS), to encrypt the data before it gets transmitted, regardless of the device you are using. Learn how SSL/TLS works to encrypt traffic in this easy to understand breakdown of the process used to secure your sensitive information when surfing the web or using apps.

5:00 PM

Welcome Reception

Grand America Hotel

5:00 PM

Lightning

Going Pro: Lifestyle Systems for the Exceptional Developer

Cory House - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

As a developer, what does it mean to go pro? Is it about achieving the senior title? A certain salary? Leading a team? I'd argue it's none of that. Going pro is a system. It's as much about what you do, as what you don't. In this session, I'll map out what it means to be a professional, the systems for getting there, and the benefits of growing from amateur, to pro.

6:00 PM

Lightning

Using your IT skills to create electronic music

Roland Guijt - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

6:30 PM

Lightning

Azure Architecture Center: The right guidance at the right time

Travis Grizzel - Microsoft

Lightning

Get your geek on

The Azure Architecture Center (AAC) is a collection of solutions guidance that helps customers build more successfully in the cloud. We research, validate and publish artifacts such as best practices, design patterns and reference architectures that are grounded in real customer implementations and learnings. Our content aims to be inclusive for everyone, and we create guidance that is bite-sized and practical, all the way through deep, thought-leadership guidance that teaches people how to think about designing in the cloud. Come learn how to get the right guidance, for the right situation, at the right time.

You've likely watched a few Pluralsight courses by this point, perhaps even more than a few. In doing so, you've spent some quality hours with one or more of our Pluralsight authors. During that time, though, have you ever wondered what goes on backstage? Are you curious about the play-by-play of how any average Pluralsight course gets made? How do we perfect the audio? What magic tricks don't you see that makes for a professionally-produced presentation? What lengths do Pluralsight authors REALLY go through to make the learning happen? Greg Shields has produced over seventy courses for Pluralsight in the past four years and over a hundred courses for other organizations in years gone past. As one of our most prolific authors, he's seen -- and tried -- just about everything in making the perfect course. Join him in this backstage tour of How Pluralsight Courses Get Made. You might just leave with a greater appreciation of the hard work and sometimes impossible challenges your Pluralsight authors go through to bring you the IT learning you've come to know and love.

1:30 PM

Lightning

Adobe Animate CC: Multiplatform Animation and Interactivity

Joseph Labrecque - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

Animate CC not only supports a variety of publish platforms - but often does so by offering design, motion, and interactive capabilities across the supported platforms. This session will provide an overview of the primary platforms supported, the differences between them, and even how to work across platforms using this engaging and capable tool!

1:30 PM

Solo

What NASA's Voyager mission teaches us about building distributed systems

Richard Seroter - Pivotal

Solo

Get your geek on

Sometimes building web-scale apps feels like rocket science. But imagine being asked to actually build and launch something that would travel farther than anything in human history. Oh, and you also have six weeks to pump out an audio recording that accurately represents all of humanity to space aliens. No big deal. Your distributed system may not have the requirements of NASA’s Voyager program, but we can learn a lot from their (ongoing!) mission. In this talk, we review this fascinating endeavor, and how they approached redundancy, improvisation, building for change, documentation, and chaos engineering. By the end of this talk, you’ll have a strong sense of the practices that matter most to your own complex software projects. And, you just might walk away with a fresh sense of awe about what humans are capable of.

1:30 PM

Solo

Aligning Business & IT Strategies

Casey Ayers - Pluralsight Author

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Too often, the business and technical divisions of organizations can find themselves at odds. Business leadership seems to ask the impossible, or not see the value of following technical best practices. Technical leadership seems not to see the strategic criticality of solving business challenges. It's time to bring this conflict to an end. In this session, attendees will gain a new perspective on how to work better with their colleagues, whether they serve in business or technical capacities in their organizations. They'll learn how a shared focus on organizational goals and initiatives; a mutual effort to assess needs and analyze the business environment; expressing expectations and performance information in common financial and strategic terms; and working to build stakeholder support can help align business and IT strategies. By working together more closely, and by developing a greater understanding of each other's unique perspectives when facing challenges, business and technical leadership can better serve the needs of their organizations, and better support each other in achieving those shared goals.

1:30 PM

Solo

Unmask Secrets of Your Business with Event Storming

Julie Lerman - Microsoft MVP

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Event storming is an enlightening method of brainstorming with domain experts to discover not only the true flow of your business process but to surface hidden problems that need your attention. ES rose from the frustrations of one insightful man, Alberto Brandolini, who was feeling too constrained when working with clients to help them model their domains in the software planning stage. Alberto armed himself with a pile of Post-It notes and a roll of paper and let his clients start pasting their thoughts on a wall. The discovery process started revealing amazing things for clients whether they were startups or long-time businesses preparing to add to or replace their legacy software. One of the most important bonuses is how frequently participants discovered that they were targeting their resources on the wrong problems. In this session you'll learn how event storming can benefit your understanding of your business and help pinpoint the right problems to focus on. You'll even get a hands-on experience doing a discovery process with the attendees of this session.

1:30 PM

Duo

Turning Real World Experience Into Real World Success

Adam Fortuna, Kurt Corbett - Pluralsight

Duo

Power to the platform

Are you looking to take your learning to the next level? With projects and interactive courses, critical components of the hands-on learning experience within the Pluralsight platform, you can practice skills in real-world scenarios. Fine tune your craft before you bring new skills into the workplace, and know your team has what it takes to meet organizational goals. In this session, we’ll discuss how projects and interactive courses can enhance your learning on the Pluralsight platform and enable your teams to meet key business objectives faster.

1:30 PM

Solo

Getting Answers to a Question

Audrey Langheinrich - Pluralsight

Solo

Get your geek on

Looking around us, we can see questions in our everyday work. How we get answers are driving the experiments we run. That can be as simple as asking someone and learning whether they are a subject expert or modifying behaviors to see what happens. We continuously run experiments that impact our cognitive maps, more importantly, in technology we seek to improve our products. It's important to understand the cycle of experimentation. If we aren't asking questions or the right ones we could end up drawing incorrect conclusions that have a detrimental impact on broader goals. We will focus on the foundations of experimentation, starting with an idea and see it through to the action on the results. This session is for people who want to make sure they have a foundation in experimentation and walk away with steps to incorporate the next time they have an idea.

1:30 PM

Solo

Better Every Day - Growing a Learning Culture at Target​

Joel Crabb - Target Corp

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Over the past three years, Tech at Target has shifted from an outsourced, waterfall model, to an in-house Product model leveraging Agile and DevOps practices on teams across Minneapolis, Bangalore and Sunnyvale. As part of this shift, Target rolled out the "Better Every Day" learning culture campaign. ​<br><br>
Better Every Day encourages tech talent to continuously learn, drive innovation and share their knowledge across the org. Since 2015, Tech at Target has achieved a nearly 20-percentage point increase in learning culture satisfaction on Target’s annual team member survey, leading to feedback like, “Working in a true learning culture has been an unbelievable experience, in addition to the growth it has provided for my career."

2:30 PM

Solo

How to learn Salesforce and make $150,000+ per year

David Liu - Google

Solo

Get your geek on

Salesforce is the hottest industry you've never heard about. Job opportunities are rampant and the supply of professionals is non-existent - skyrocketing salaries worldwide. Join us to learn more about the Salesforce industry and how you can make the switch in as little as 6 months - no prior experience required!

2:30 PM

Solo

Everyone Should Be Able to Use Your Software: Accessibility for Balanced Teams

Raquel Breternitz - Pivotal Labs

Solo

Get your geek on

Much of the web is inaccessible or difficult to use. This hurts your user base, your market reach, and—most crucially—the people who use your products. Learn about the history and the basics of digital and web accessibility, as well as some ways to get started improving your products and services to be universally approachable and usable.

2:30 PM

Solo

DevSci: Better Software Through Data Science

Matthew Renze - Pluralsight Author

Solo

Get your geek on

Data science is revolutionizing the world around us. We’re incorporating artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data-driven decision making in all aspects of business. However, many software developers have yet to learn how to leverage these practices to create better software. In this presentation, we’ll learn how expert developers are using data science to create better software. We’ll learn about A/B testing, code-quality metrics, machine learning, and hypothesis-driven development. Finally, we’ll learn how to use data exhaust from our dev-ops pipeline to drive improvements in our software development process.

2:30 PM

Duo

Iris: The Science Behind Pluralsight

Michelle Keim, Chris Mayfield - Pluralsight

Duo

Power to the platform

Everything at Pluralsight begins and ends with Iris, the science behind the Pluralsight platform. Created using modern test theories based on over 50 years of research and combined with machine learning, Iris powers Pluralsight IQ, the new standard for measuring tech skills. Fueling our assessment algorithm and recommendation engine, Iris helps you quantify and develop skills across technologies. In this session, learn more about how Iris works in the background to provide a smarter, more personalized skill development journey found only on Pluralsight.

2:30 PM

Solo

From Developer to Manager: Things You Should Know Before Making the Jump

Amy Dredge - Pluralsight

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Have you thought about moving into management? What is it like to be an Engineering Manager? How do you make the transition? In this session, we'll explore reasons you might consider moving to management, and things to know as you make your own move.

2:30 PM

Solo

Transforming Digital Talent

Heather Whiteman - General Electric

Solo

Level-up your leadership

The future of work is here and it has no plans of slowing down the pace of change! New skills & jobs are being created at an unprecedented pace. Automation is transforming how, when and by whom work gets done. Join Heather Whiteman [Head of People Strategy, Analytics, Learning & Operations at GE Digital] as she gives insights into how to build, grow & transform digital talent in today’s ever changing world of work. You will hear about the future of work, changing trends, and insights into how General Electric has approached this challenge; including wins & lessons learned. The focus of the session will be to provide you with thoughts on the future of work in your world and how to be prepared.

3:30 PM

Solo

How to Conduct a Product Security Test: And How it Fits Into the Larger Security Strategy

Jared DeMott - VDA Labs

Solo

Get your geek on

Code is now running on just about everything. Threats from around the world would like to damage our data, reputation, finances and more. As such, we need to be as secure as possible. There are lots of arrows to that quiver! One of them is AppSec or code security. But more broadly we need to look at the whole product and ecosystem. We need to find security bugs in the products we depend on -- before bad actors do. In this presentation, renowned cyber expert, Dr. DeMott, will walk us through the process of how developers and security pros should be conducting such examinations. The steps, the wars stories, the experience: we hope to see you there.

3:30 PM

Solo

Rebooting Your Agile Transformation Using Empathy

Benjamin Day - Pluralsight Author

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Let’s face it. Not every company makes the switch to Agile on the first try. A lot of times, it seems like you make the right moves but little or nothing actually changes. It’s another non-transformational agile transformation. If you’re the leader of this organization, how do you fix it? Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that it’s probably not a technical problem. The bad news is that it’s probably a corporate culture / people problem. This session will discuss those common people and corporate culture problems that slow or stop your agile transformation. For each of these problems, we’ll discuss why they’re slowing you down, what to do about them, and how to monitor them as your lead your org to Agility.

3:30 PM

Solo

Every Problem is a Scaling Problem: Leading Change in High Growth Environments

Brian Garofola - Vibes

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Organizations today are in a constant state of change and achieving lofty goals such as “digital transformations” present challenges to both culture and technology. Leaders are faced with the daunting task of delivering new innovations while maintaining high levels of employee engagement as both their team and their customer base grows rapidly. In this talk, I’ll draw on my own experiences as an engineering leader in high growth technology organizations to offer some insights into how to lead change, balancing the technical and cultural aspects. I’ll offer practical advice that has helped me succeed (and fail) along my journey. You’ll leave with a few ideas and concepts on how you can better lead change in your organization, along with a list of resources that can help you on your journey.

3:30 PM

Solo

Learn How to Quantify Skills with Pluralsight IQ

Krishna Kannan - Pluralsight

Solo

Power to the platform

Navigating what adjacent skills are needed to excel in a role can be a tall order, but what if you knew exactly what it takes? That’s Pluralsight IQ. Imagine you’re great at JavaScript, but does that make you a great web developer? As a learner, understand your skills relative to your role and take the guesswork out of growth with a personalized learning plan. As a leader, quantify the proficiencies that exist within specific job functions and enable the learning and development of your team members. In this session, learn how to make Pluralsight IQ work for you.

In the age of information overload, you have to make people stop in their tracks to pay attention. Data are not just 1s and 0s, sometimes the data points are people. To make an impact with data, it takes careful consideration and a balance of technical skill and design to resonate with an audience. See some real-life examples that were selected by UNICEF and the United Nations.

3:30 PM

Solo

Why Do We All Suck at Collaboration

Karen VanHouten - Curious Red

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Collaboration is the keystone of successful innovation. And many teams THINK they have a collaborative culture. They share their work, solicit and incorporate feedback, iterate with team members–all activities we associate with a collaborative work process. And still, many teams struggle to generate truly impactful ideas, or to actually build products from those ideas and deliver something valuable to customers. Despite best intentions, they can’t seem to get to a deep, effective level of collaboration necessary for success. Why is something as basic as working together so difficult? Why do we all seem to suck at collaboration?
Join us as we explore the most common challenges of collaborative work, and discuss simple but powerful ways teams can tackle those challenges together: practical methods you can use to override unhealthy patterns, align on goals, and start designing a culture that nurtures robust collaboration.

4:30 PM

Panel

Create the Future Awards

Panel

Get your geek on

To celebrate innovators and change makers everywhere, Pluralsight is hosting the first-ever Create the Future Awards at LIVE 2018. We’re looking for technology’s best kept secrets: companies that are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, disrupting their industries and driving change. Be part of the excitement as five breakout startups pitch their tech products to our panel for a chance to win $50,000.

4:30 PM

Lightning

Accelerating Your Creativity with The Connected Workspace

Jesus Ramirez - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

This break out session will help you speed up your creative process by taking advantage of the apps, services, and assets that you probably don’t know you already have. In this session, you will learn the new tools and techniques that are available to you through Adobe’s Creative Cloud. You will learn modern and up-to-date workflows that will help you stay ahead of the curve and help you create faster and collaborate more efficiently with your teams.

4:30 PM

Solo

Building Data Products at GitHub

Omoju Miller - GitHub

Solo

Get your geek on

GitHub has been around for ten years, as such, we have ten years worth of computational data mostly around code. We are now in the process of turning our vasts amount of data into insights that can support and transform the software development life-cycle. In this session, you will learn about the challenges of going from an engineering product development company to a data-products development company. Further, you will learn how GitHub is building the 21st century Augmented Computational Knowledge worker.

4:30 PM

Solo

How Spring changed Java Development

Bryan Hansen - Software Technology Group

Solo

Get your geek on

In this session we will look at the landscape of Spring tools and discuss how they help you get to market faster. We will discuss what has changed in Spring 5 and a sort of "State of the Union" of Java development.

4:30 PM

Solo

Preparing Your Organization for Emerging Technologies

Jason Miller - Dunbar Armored, Inc.

Solo

Level-up your leadership

The buzz today is around artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and block chain, but not every organization is prepared to take advantage of these emerging technologies. Additionally, advanced technologies come with their own set of challenges from resources to business process. So how can we improve productivity or competitive advantage in our businesses? How do we as technology leaders help the business see value in the adoption of emerging technology? What can we expect in hardware, software, people, business process, and how do we train up everyone involved? Most importantly, how do we create a business justification to do the fun stuff? During our time together we will answer these questions and I will share my journey on developing trust, quick wins, managing change, failing fast, recovering faster, while still having fun.

4:30 PM

Duo

Skills Analytics: Objectivity Meets Actionable Insights

Bhavika Shah, William Werner - Nasdaq

Duo

Power to the platform

In the rapidly changing environment of technology, how do you know if your team is able to keep up? In this session, we’ll take a deeper look at how Pluralsight’s skills analytics offer an unprecedented view into the proficiencies of technologists within your organization. View analytics on usage, subjects, skills, and more to gain objective insight into your team’s strengths and weaknesses, then use that information to find opportunities for growth, discover hidden talent, and align the right people to the right projects.

4:30 PM

Solo

Reconnaissance: How Hackers Decide if Your Company is a Target

Dale Meredith - Pluralsight Author

Solo

Get your geek on

"Knowing is Half the Battle" - GI Joe. Yep, it's a valid statement. Most organizations have no idea what is being exposed about them on the internet. Maybe you had a pen-test done last year; unfortunately, the amount of data that's being created and stored on the internet changes by the second. Join Dale as he takes you through how easy it is to see what would-be attackers are discovering about your organization (without breaking any laws), how they choose their targets and the very minimum that your organization should be doing to protect itself.

4:30 PM

Solo

How Spring changed Java Development

Bryan Hansen - Software Technology Group

Solo

Get your geek on

In this session we will look at the landscape of Spring tools and discuss how they help you get to market faster. We will discuss what has changed in Spring 5 and a sort of "State of the Union" of Java development.

5:00 PM

Happy Hour

Grand America Hotel

8:00 PM

LIVE PARTY AND CONCERT

Grand America Hotel

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Breakfast 7:00 AM

General Session9:00 AM

Lunch12:00 PM

Breakouts1:30 PM

Conference Ends4:30 PM

7:00 AM

Breakfast

Grand America Hotel

9:00 AM

General Session

Grand America Hotel

12:00 PM

Lunch

Grand America Hotel

12:30 PM

Lightning

Ethical Hacking: DYI Mobile Security Workstation (for Cheap), Part 1

Dale Meredith - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

Every Red & Blue Team member needs a dedicated workstation when engaging a network via a pen-test or even if you want to test your security skills. While other training companies charge up to $749, for this exact system, Dale will show you how he reversed engineered (are you surprised he hacked it?) using $250 in parts off Amazon and open source software to build the BatPi, a complete mobile security workstation. The BatPi is powerful enough to run Kali Linux or The Parrot Project (the two premiere security OS), both of which contains over 300 tools, from scanning wireless networks, run Wireshark, to even document your engagement...oh and did I mention it has a touchscreen?!

1:00 PM

Lightning

Ethical Hacking: DYI Mobile Security Workstation (for Cheap), Part 2

Dale Meredith - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

Now that we’ve created our mobile hacking workstation (BatPi), let’s put this baby through it’s steps and see if what we can accomplish. How about hacking some WiFi? Didn’t hit the first Lightning Talk, don’t worry you’ll still learn about how much wireless is compromising your data.

1:30 PM

Lightning

The Mindful Developer: The Science of Stress Management

Matthew Renze - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

Does your career as an IT professional cause you stress? What are you currently doing to manage the negative health effects of this stress? IT professionals are uniquely predisposed to certain stress-related mental-health issues. The key problem is that we evolved to survive in a wilderness context; however, these same survival adaptations are now in direct conflict with our modern high-tech world. In this session, we will learn about the science of mindfulness for stress management. We’ll discuss practices like meditation, biofeedback, and neurofeedback. In addition, we will learn how we, as IT professionals, can use these practices to reduce stress, improve our mental health, and increase our focus.

1:30 PM

Solo

From one release per quarter to 30 times a day

Marcel de Vries - Xpirit

Solo

Get your geek on

In this session I will take you along a journey where we have an existing legacy application that we will enable to be released multiple times a day. You will learn you how to apply modern release techniques that enable you to move from long and tiresome release cycles to releasing multiple times a day. I will cover the fundamental concepts of DevOps that will enable multiple releases a day. think of concepts like: Feature Toggles, Red/Green Deployments, Telemetry, Cloud technologies, deployment automation, etc. This session will learn you how to release quality software any moment you want.

1:30 PM

Solo

Equality in Education featuring Ziauddin Yousafzai

Ziauddin Yousafzai - Malala Fund

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Hear from Ziauddin Yousafzai, co-founder and board member of Malala Fund. Ziauddin is the father of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Malala Yousafzai. Together they champion every girl’s right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education.

1:30 PM

Solo

SSO for your Fridge - IoT Security with the OAuth Device Flow

Scott Brady - Rock Solid Knowledge

Solo

Get your geek on

OAuth is well established as the go-to protocol for API Security, but there are still a few application types which struggle to securely fit into the OAuth story. This includes devices where input is tricky, such as inputting a 20-character password using your TV remote on an A to Z keyboard. Or devices where there is no browser, where the dreaded Resource Owner Password Credential grant type still reigns king. Finally, there is a solution, with the all-new Device flow for OAuth, specially designed for these pesky browserless platforms or devices with limited input methods. In this talk, we'll see the device flow in action and look at how it is an improvement on existing solutions using real-world scenarios where it should be used.

Interactive Content is a new frontier on the Pluralsight platform. In this session, we'll discuss how interactive coding challenges compare to skill assessments, and the very different purpose they serve. We'll implement a coding challenge together — taking a dive into the technical challenges we face — and see what makes this a great way to practice and learn. By the end, we'll catch a glimpse of the potential of the platform and why it represents the future of learning.

1:30 PM

Duo

Overcoming disruption in the digital age

Mariah Hay, Sheree Atcheson - Women Who Code

Duo

Get your geek on

As a former developer and Global Ambassador for Women Who Code, Sheree Atcheson is helping companies realize their digital potential. Join her alongside Pluralsight VP of Product Mariah Hay for a insightful look at the tech landscape and the role developers and product play in shaping the future.

2:00 PM

Lightning

Navigating The Adobe Creative Cloud

Myra Ferguson - Pluralsight Author

Lightning

Get your geek on

If you’re a creative who uses just a few Adobe applications or a technology leader in your organization, find out what the Adobe Creative Cloud is in this high-level overview. You’ll discover what it is, what products it includes, what you can make with it, and how it benefits both you and your organization.

2:30 PM

Panel

The Inevitable Blockchain Panel Session

Dan Appleman, Michael Perry, Abe Burnett, Ed Curren, David Rainey

Panel

Get your geek on

Blockchain is a technology that will impact every aspect of technology and change the world. Blockchain is just the latest overhyped technology that everyone is jumping on because there’s so much money chasing it. The future of blockchain is in cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, private distributed blockchains, private read only blockchains, all of the above and none of the above. In this session you’ll learn about the true nature and future of blockchain. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, it’s going to be interesting.

2:30 PM

Solo

Your Customers Hate You (And Other lies)

Heather Wilde - ROCeteer

Solo

Level-up your leadership

There's an old axiom that says, if you want customer service done right, keep the customers away from the engineers. Proper communication flow is essential for Agile companies, but so many people do it wrong.
In this talk, we will:
- Provide developers with a framework for filtering customer requests while still keeping them engaged
- Provide teams with a perspective on how to understand their customer
This is something that applies to every developer and unfortunately usually doesn’t get addressed until it is too late, causing entire product pivots for non-issues.

2:30 PM

Duo

Java SE 10, Java EE, EE4J: what is happening in the Java space?

Jose Paumard, Maurice Naftalin

Duo

Get your geek on

With 12 millions developers world wide, Java is by far the most used language for large business applications. So when things change in the Java space, it may impact very large portions of the software industry. And things have been changing a lot in the last year. Java 9 has been released in September 2017, but the long time support version is announced for September 2018. In the meantime, Java will have a release cycle of 6 months, to be compared with the 4 years since the release of the previous major version. Java EE, which saw 8 major versions in 18 years has been terminated as such. The project has been donated to the Eclipse foundation and is now called EE4J. What is going on with Java? Is the support still there? Is Java going to evolve as the industry needs it? Those are the topics this presentation covers, with both a technical point of view and a business point of view to answer this question: is Java still a language of choice for the next years to come?

2:30 PM

Panel

Collective Impact in the Humanitarian Sector

Leila Toplic, Suha Syouf, Lindsay Cope Bouchelle, Lindsey Kneuven

Panel

Level-up your leadership

Displaced youth have limited access to quality technology skills-training resources which restricts the opportunities for accessing dignified work and higher education.
In an effort to meet this need, Pluralsight One has partnered with NetHope and joined the No Lost Generation (NLG) Technology Task Force. The goal of the NLG task force is to prevent a lost generation of Syrian and Iraqi youth by employing innovative solutions through technology and education. This panel will discuss the unique needs faced by conflict-affected youth and explore how technology-based solutions and cross-sector collaboration can drive lasting impact at scale.

2:30 PM

Solo

Untangling Quantum Computing

Greg McMurray - Western Electricity Coordinating Council

Solo

Get your geek on

Have you heard the buzz around quantum computing? Find out about this exciting new intersection of programming, physics, and mathematics. Learn about the basics of quantum behaviors and watch as we untangle the mysteries in how they can be used to more efficiently solve computing problems. See first-hand how to get started with a free simulator and explore the algorithms that are changing the way we look at computing.

2:30 PM

Solo

How to Feed a Data-hungry Organization

Dan Roden - Domo

Solo

Get your geek on

Whether in tech, healthcare, retail, finance, or another industry, today’s IT professional must master the balancing act of empowering their organization with the data it needs to be successful, while maintaining proper access and control. Join us to learn how some of the largest companies use Domo to leverage their data to run all aspects of their business.

3:30 PM

Solo

Machine Learning: The Introduction You've Always Wanted

Simon Allardice - Pluralsight Author

Solo

Get your geek on

If you see the term "Machine Learning", and think: I-should-really-know-more-about-that-but-every-time-I-try-my-eyes-glaze-over, this session is for you. Sure, there's a lot of hype. But if you're involved in software development, DevOps, or do knowledge work of any kind, let's face it—you already know this will affect your life in the coming years. It's time to make it part of your skillset. Knowing little (or even nothing) about Machine Learning might be acceptable now, but it won't be for long. But there’s a problem: the world of Machine Learning has a long history, and if you're not from a mathematical or computer science background, taking one step into it will immediately surround you with jargon that can feel impenetrable: from terms like Decision Trees and Support Vectors, to Genetic Algorithms and Depth-Wise Separable Convolutions. And when you encounter these terms, it’s easy to dismiss some of this as academic, theoretical, or “ivory tower” - but it isn't. These are already implemented in every major platform and available to you right now. This is a practical, pragmatic introduction to implementing Machine and Deep Learning in real-world projects, using the latest tools, platforms and techniques: from agents and bots to voice and vision interfaces. Using specific, real-world examples — and minimal jargon — we'll cover the most important ideas and concepts — and shift your thinking away from a "vague theoretical understanding" into how you can actually use this in your own career.

3:30 PM

Solo

Why Containers Will Take Over the World

Elton Stoneman - Docker, Inc.

Solo

Get your geek on

Containers are the next model of compute, after VMs and bare metal. And you all know containers are here to stay. They're the leaner, faster and more portable alternative, and one day every app will run in a container. Containers will be ubiquitous because of the wide range of problems they solve, and the huge ecosystem that's making the solutions. The core concepts in container platforms are all open - the image and runtime specifications, the registry, the engines and the orchestrators. The promise of portability makes containers a safe choice for the next generation of software delivery. Companies are making that choice and investing in containers for everything from legacy apps to new cloud-native projects. In this session I'll demonstrate two of the main uses cases for containers - moving existing apps to the cloud, and building apps in lean, modern technology stacks. I'll take an existing ASP.NET 3.5 WebForms app from a Windows Server 2003 VM, migrate it to Docker with no code changes, and then run it in Azure. Then I'll deploy a brand-new .NET Core Web API running on Nano Server in a container alongside the WebForms app.

3:30 PM

Solo

Managing for Autonomy: How to lead teams without telling them what to do

Maureen Botoman - Pluralsight

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Autonomy has become one of the buzzwords for technology teams, but what does a successful autonomous team look like? Further, what does it mean as a manager to work in an environment where a team is empowered to act independently? How can we create structures and processes that allow people with autonomy to do the best work of their careers? In this session we will discuss the merits of autonomous teams and the roles we play as managers in an autonomous environment.

3:30 PM

Solo

LeanIn.Org: Closing the Gender Leadership Gap

Bekah Thayer - LeanIn.Org

Solo

Level-up your leadership

Company commitment to gender equality is at an all-time high, but women still remain underrepresented at every level. That’s where Lean In comes in. We run programs that help women advance and companies create more equal workplaces. Learn more about Lean In’s programs for companies, including a sneak peek into a new program that will bring employees together to uncover – and counteract – gender bias in the workplace.

4:30 PM

Conference Ends

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